ARTSCAPE: SEPTEMBER LOOKS LIKE being a Friel fest in Irish theatre, when both the Gate and the Abbey are set to mark the playwright's 80th year.
The Gate will present the mini-festival of three plays that it recently toured to the Sydney Festival. Preceding the Dublin performances from September 9th to 19th, the Gate productions of Faith Healer, Afterplayand The Yalta Gamewill be seen at the Edinburgh International Festival, which opens next week.
As part of the Abbey's celebrations, Brian Friel has chosen a number of plays by other dramatists which will be presented in public readings in the Peacock. Actor and comedian Pat Shortt has been cast in The Death and Resurrection of Mr Rocheby Thomas Kilroy which has its first reading on September 9th. Kilroy's play was first performed in the Abbey in 1973, having previously been rejected by the company. This will be followed by The Long Christmas Dinnerby Thornton Wilder and The Dandy Dollsby George Fitzmaurice on September 10th and 11th.
On Sunday, September 13th, there will be an Abbey gala event hosted by Sinéad Cusack and directed by Patrick Mason who also directs one of the Gate plays, The Yalta Game, based on Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Lapdog. The Gate production of Afterplayfeatures stage and screen star Frances Barber and Niall Buggy, and is directed by Garry Hynes. Booking gate-theatre.ie or 01-8744045/01-8746042 and abbeytheatre.ie or 01-8787222.
Top line-up for Music Network
Music Network has announced that its autumn season will include countrywide tours by Irish and international artists including violinist Tasmin Little and Ibon Koteron, who plays the alboka and dulzaina, two Basque wind instruments. Other performers include fiddler Niamh Ní Charra and guitarist Gavin Ralston, who will team up with Ibon Koteron as part of the traditional tours in September.
In October, Norwegian Grammy-award winner Ragnhild Furebotten and Tore Bruvoll’s group Hekla Stålstrenga will give performances and the classical tour brings together soprano Celine Byrne and mezzo soprano Tara Erraught, who have both been working in Europe and North America recently.
Celine Byrne has recently become familiar to audiences worldwide thanks to her collaboration with the tenors José Carreras and Roberto Alagna. Having won first prize at the 2007 Maria Callas Grand Prix in Athens, Celine is a soloist with several opera companies and has also performed with classical stars such as percussionist Evelyn Glennie and conductors David Giménez, Robert Houlihan and Colman Pearce.
Violinist Little will perform material from her music download project, The Naked Violin, in December in a fund-raiser for Music Network.
All four Dublin performances will take place in Dublin Castle. For information on the regional venues and to book tickets, see musicnetwork.ie, tel. 01-6719429 or e-mail admin@musicnetwork.ie.
A flea in its Earwig
The spectacular, amazing and astounding high-wire feats of Pignut Production's acrobatic fleas proved to be one of the highlights of the recent Galway Arts Festival, proving that one doesn't have to look too far (even with a magnifying glass) for sheer creativity at times, writes Lorna Siggins.
Pignut continues its flea feats in north Co Galway tomorrow, as part of the 10-day Tuam Arts Festival, which is run by the Earwig community arts group and opened last night with an outdoor quarrel between two pig-keepers which led to the celebrated scrap known as the Táin Bó Cuailgne.
The home-grown Saw Doctors are the headline act. They are delighted that 130,000 people (according to RTÉ's Tam ratings) watched their recently screened documentary, Clare Island to Cape Cod. The group is one of more than 80 acts or artists booked by the Earwig Arts Group, the not-for-profit community arts organisation founded in 2003.
Also involved are local and highly successful singer-songwriter Noelie McDonnell, indie bands The Coonies and The Ralphs, Dublin sleaze funk, and “libidinous r’n’b” band Republic Of Loose and “agit-folk” singer and performance poet Jinx Lennon.
Today, the Ladder 13 theatre troupe and Tuam All Star Gymnastics – the latter currently training to “take on the world” – will perform “crucial and dangerous rescues” in Tuam Shopping Centre at 3pm.
Other free events include an evening of short films and documentaries in Canavan's pub tonight, entitled We Like Short Shorts.
Soprano Sylvia O’Brien will perform with violinist Elizabeth Cooney and pianist Hanna Shyabayeva in St Mary’s Cathedral, storyteller Eddie Lenihan will enthral all in Tuam library on Monday morning.
Mags Furey and Kaz Fernandez will host a dance movement, also in the library, on Monday afternoon, and Dunmore Amateur Dramatics will present Tom Murphy's Conversations On A Homecomingin the Mall Theatre.
A festival art trail involving artists such as Isabelle Gaborit, Tríona Mac Giolla Rí, Marie Hannon, Jacinta Fahy, and the Tuam patchwork and quilting group, Ready, Thready, Sew, extends from the town hall, to the library and shopping centre.
The Gombeens are among acts booked for Wigóg, the children’s wing, which ends with a children’s disco in the festival tent (yes, it has a tent!) on Wednesday.
For full details of the programme, see earwigart.com.
Beatles and Buster for Dingle
The first public screening of the 10-hour marathon that is The Beatles Anthologyfilm is scheduled as part of the of the third Dingle Film Festival which takes place from September 10th to 13th.
As part of its comedy theme this year, the festival will screen W ithnail and I, The Big Lebowski, Monty Python and the Holy Grailand the Buster Keaton silent movie, Steamboat Bill, Jrwith a newly commissioned score.
The Anthologyscreening comes the day after the release of The Beatles's back catalogue and covers the group's entire career – from the early days of their first UK hit, to the forming of Apple Records and beyond. The festival organisers says this event is a tribute to Chips Chipperfield, who died last year and was a producer on the Anthology. Geoff Wonfor, a co-director of The Beatles Anthology, will attend the festival and take part in a public interview with Philip King, who will also conduct an interview with Anthony Wall of the BBC arts show, Arena.
Wall's new film, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, will also be screened. The Gregory Peck Award For Excellence in the Art of Film, presented to Gabriel Byrne last year, will also be announced.
For further information on the festival, see dinglefilmfestival.com.